Myth #1: It’s the owner not the breed

The outdated debate, “It’s the owner, not the breed,” has caused the pit bull problem to grow into a 30-year old problem. Designed to protect pit bull breeders and owners, the slogan ignores the genetic history of the breed and blames these horrific maulings — inflicted by the pit bull’s genetic “hold and shake” bite style — on environmental factors. While environment plays a role in a pit bull’s behavior, it is genetics that leaves pit bull victims with permanent and disfiguring injuries.

The pit bull’s genetic traits are not in dispute. Many appellate courts agree that pit bulls pose a significant danger to society and can be regulated accordingly. Some of the genetic traits courts have identified include: unpredictability of aggression, tenacity (“gameness” the refusal to give up a fight), high pain tolerance and the pit bull’s “hold and shake” bite style. According to forensic medical studies, similar injuries have only been found elsewhere on victims of shark attacks.

Purveyors of this myth also cannot account for the many instances in which pit bull owners and family members are victimized by their pet dogs. From 2005 to 2013, pit bulls killed 176 Americans, about one citizen every 18.6 days. Of these deaths, 52% involved a family member and a household pit bull. Notably, in the first 8 months of 2011, nearly half of those killed by a pit bull was its owner. One victim was an “avid supporter” of Bad Rap, a recipient of Michael Vick’s dogs.

As with many of the older working breeds the breed name is also a job description. Pointer, retriever, setter, hovawart and shepherd are examples. The Pit Bull Terrier or American (Pit) Bull Terrier was bred solely to do combat in a dogpit. They were never nurse’s aids, nanny dogs, soldiers’ rescue dogs, herding dogs, astronauts, physicists or anything other than combat dogs. I am always suspicious of those who claim to love this breed while simultaneously in such denial of what the breed is in reality. If you love something you love it for what it truly is and not for something it has never been and can never become.